Dear Engineering Manager,

I get it.

It’s overwhelming to step into a career that is completely different from what you’ve been doing before. I know it was for me.

One day you’re committing code, delivering technical assets the impact of which is on a dashboard, another day you’re taking a deep-dive into some of the most complicated creatures, humans.

Where do you even start to get some solid ground under your feet again? And is it ever solid, or mere quicksand that sucks you in once you feel confident?

Individual people are complex enough (infinitely complex, to be frank), where do you even start about creating a team out of them? And what is a well-functioning team. How do you know? What is a step towards “better”? What is a step towards “worse”?

How will your first week on this journey be? What about your first month? Six months?

Who is a competent manager in your organization who can show you the ropes? Stick it out with you. If they’re great, they are probably going to get promoted soon and get super busy.

And please, please don’t tell me you had 3 managers change in the last 12 months :). And if you did, my condolences.

You probably started looking online and found bits and pieces. A couple of books, a couple of videos. Some may turn out great, some will be disappointing.

Maybe you even received some on-the-job training, that’s slightly more relevant for the environment you’re in. But is it the state-of-the-art? How does it all come together? How are you going to apply it? And when? Is there even time to learn in the ever more dynamic workplace?

I was so anxious about the journey when I first started it 8 years ago, I could hardly sleep.

I wish I could time-travel back and hand my earlier self a ticket to something like

A battle-tested Guide for surviving and thriving as an Engineering Manager. Taught live, in small groups (no more than 12 people) over the course of 4 weeks.

Why should you take a course from me?

My name is Misha and I’ve been around IT mostly as an Engineer (up to Principal/Staff) for over 20 years now, during 8 of them I was an Engineering Manager, Senior Engineering Manager, Head of Engineering or similar. I am not famous or anything like that but over the years I have ironed out an approach that worked everywhere I went. It’s the same exact approach I used to coach over 20 Engineering Managers throughout my career in companies operating in very different industries.

I have actually been in all roles and tangents of roles I will be speaking about, except the Product Owner. I was promoted many times over the job role I will be giving you the insights into. The departments I ran and created from the ground up always delivered, had the lowest attrition and the highest engagement when compared to the similar departments in the bigger corporations I worked for.

I believe in merit. Merit shows when you listen to someone speak, or read the letters they type up, and it’s the best verification of competence one can have, so if you have never seen any of my videos, please check them out. You will most likely find that all of this comes from real deep experience with non-trivial issues. And that I am intense and possess a low signal-to-noise ratio when teaching and communicating. I am so confident I can deliver, that I left some parts of the course open for you for free.


What’s in the course

  • Clear roadmap and understanding of what good looks like, under the cultural assumptions taken by the course’s author;

    Reduced anxiety;

    Clear next steps in the journey;

  • Instantly become more effective at most aspects of the job;

    More engaged teams and people;

    Improved self-awareness;

    Feel confident delivering feedback;

    Be able to choose an optimal medium and format for delivering feedback;

  • Feel and be more productive;

    Be in control as opposed to merely reacting to random events controlling your day;

    Make conscious decisions about where time goes and doesn’t;

    Be so productive your peers will get jealous;

  • Feel confident during the most stressful and complicated conversations you will hold in this job;

    Learn how to gather evidence like an investigative journalist (almost);

    Learn how to be perceived as a thorough, fair manager and how not to try and please everyone;

    Learn what are the traits of a successful organization when it comes to spot-on performance management;

  • Have a roadmap for fixing typical delivery issues in Agile teams;

    Be able to confidently articulate benefits of setting goals;

    Be able to manage expectations and coach team members on that;

  • Feel some degree of confidence in the new domain which is human beings;

    Understand the pitfalls of modern corporate approach to this, and know how to do better;

    Gain some degree of self-awareness and understanding the imperfect nature of the job one’s able to do;

  • Be able to at least have one conflict resolution method in hand;

    Have less fear of conflict as it’s necessary for team progression;

    Know where your responsibility in terms of conflict begins and ends;

  • Become as efficient as one can be in anything (yes, also beyond management);

    Be in a state of relaxed control knowing you don’t have to personally be in every situation but that the vast majority of them will still play out as if you were;

    Strike a balance between overdelegation and underdelegation;

  • Be able to find a balance for catching up with your direct reports;

    Have an idea of what a good frequency and structure is for 1-1s;

  • You will have a model for team maturity that you can easily follow;

    You will learn how healthy versus unhealthy teams behave and learn how to fix common issues;

  • Be able to get through the noise and tell good engineers from not great ones to manage them accordingly;

    Feel better knowing you’re balancing your IC work with managerial work;

  • Have a healthy relationship with your manager and build a wide network of people for when they disappear (they will);

I haven’t yet come up with a catchy short phrase for it, maybe something like

Clueless to competent Engineering Manager, or your money back

Comes with 1 follow-up bonus call in a month after completion to see how you’re doing, allowing for more questions and support, opportunities to create a bond with peers from your group going through the same challenges as you, so you can keep in touch after the course.

What I am explaining in this training, it’s not just showing you the ropes of a profession. You are going to feel prepared for most curveballs life will throw at you in this job. I am offering a roadmap for your entire career. It comes with better sleep, less anxiety, proven methods of approach for almost everything you will need as an Engineering Manager, if not everything.

If I have to put a number on the value of this, then I’d probably say that it cannot take less than 2 years for any manager on the job to arrive at something similar if they are extremely lucky, as they start with random googling and random inputs. I am offering you a time machine that allows you to cut this time to 1—4 months. And how much is that worth? I’d say your yearly bonus that you wouldn’t get otherwise, and for most of you it’s no less than 10K. Which is probably low-balling it considering the pay in the industry.

That’s why I am pricing the course at 1500 euro, a fraction of what you will get out of this.

Launching the course soon. Currently finishing the last bits of the program! In the meantime, please sign up to my email list below to not miss great content on the subject. Also you get an email when the course launches. First 12 people to sign up get a 30% discount.

How to stop stressing out and start rocking as a new Engineering Manager

Surviving as a newly promoted manager is hard. I make it a whole lot easier, more predictable, less stressful, and more fun

No spam, just to-the-point content.